Within Tallwood  is a group of dedicated students working toward creating a healthy and completely tobacco free community. These students are members of the Virginia-wide Y-street initiative, which enlists the help of student leaders to promote its campaigns.

Although most of the campaigns are geared towards the students, such as Great Starts with Breakfast, which strives toward making breakfast easier to obtain for students, there are others that are directed toward providing the community with healthier food options in local stores, such as Fresh Spot.

“It’s for community awareness, not just school awareness,” states Jaelee Heard, 10th grade student.

After a 4 to 5 hour training session in the beginning of the school year, students become members of Y-street within their school. Once these students become active members and attend meetings and events they have the potential to become state-recognized leaders.

Exemplifying traits to make them cream of the crop, Mrs. Holuka speaks highly of her Y-street leaders, “Jaelee and Treasure were actually in my head” as the ideal representatives.

Y-street leaders attend leadership conferences where they learn how to function as the administration within they learn how to collaborate, how to check their surveys also known as, their measures of progress, and how to coordinate events.

These leaders are expected to create their own event to culminate the campaigns they’ve participated in and promote a healthy environment in their own way.  

“We would like to expand our events,” states Jaelee. “We would like to get the whole school involved.”

Photo by Mrs. Holuka